


Unknell'd

by unspeakable3



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Black Family-centric (Harry Potter), First War with Voldemort, Gen, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), POV Regulus Black, Regulus Black Deserves Better, Regulus Black Dies, Regulus Black Feels, Regulus Black Needs a Hug, Regulus Black-centric, The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, Wordcount: Under 10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23088040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unspeakable3/pseuds/unspeakable3
Summary: Regulus opened his eyes and sat up with a jolt, his hands trembling as he lifted them up to his face and half-expected the worst.
Relationships: Alphard Black & Regulus Black, Regulus Black & Black Family, Regulus Black & Kreacher, Regulus Black & Sirius Black
Comments: 35
Kudos: 196
Collections: Genuary 2021





	Unknell'd

_Nothing in his life  
_ _Became him like the leaving it._

_(William Shakespeare, Macbeth Act 1 Scene 4)_

The first word that drifted to the forefront of Regulus’s mind as he came slowly, fitfully, to consciousness was _Petrichor_.

Petrichor, that pleasant smell that follows the summer rain, all damp earth and fresh grass and awakened life.

Petrichor, from the Greek _petra_ , stone, and _ichor_ , the life-blood of the gods.

 _Petra_.

Regulus thought that he had been lying on stone. The cold damp stone of the cave, not earth. Not soft, moist earth.

_Petrichor._

He flexed his fingers experimentally and found springy moss beneath them. He stretched his fingers and spread his palms out, tentatively exploring his new surroundings: ticklish blades of grass, scratchy twigs, wet leaves, the occasional fuzzy dandelion.

Regulus thought that he had been in pain, too, but he wasn’t hurting any more. The fire that had burned him from the inside out, the choking flames that crept up his oesophagus and scratched at his throat, had faded. Gone. Perhaps he had managed, at last, to quench fire with water and—

_Oh, no._

The water had quenched the fire but flooded his mouth and nose and lungs - and not just the water, but the dead things lurking beneath it. Dead people. Those that still had nails had clawed at his chest and back and neck and those that didn’t had gripped all four of his limbs with an inexhaustible strength even though they only had bones to grip him with.

He thought he had struggled. He thought he had tried to fight them off, but the last thing he could remember was his hands scrambling for purchase on a cold wet skull and coming away with dank hair and greying skin tangled between his fingers.

The grass and the moss and the wet leaves suddenly felt horribly reminiscent of the bloated decomposing Inferi. Regulus opened his eyes and sat up with a jolt, his hands trembling as he lifted them up to his face and half-expected the worst.

The worst didn’t come. His hands were stained only with the dirt of the forest floor, pale unblemished skin stretching to—

Stretching to pale, unblemished forearms.

Regulus turned his arms over, as though it could have moved. He blinked furiously. He rubbed at his eyes with his fists. He pinched himself, hard, but his arms, his _left forearm_ in particular, remained blissfully bare. The brand that he had regretted almost the instant it had been burned into his skin was gone. The irremovable Dark Mark had been removed.

Disbelieving, he ran his right hand over his arm as if to try and dispel some concealment charm that lingered there though he knew, logically, that no concealment could have hidden the Dark Lord’s curse. Regulus had tried them all, locked away in his bedroom at Grimmauld Place.

And sure enough he detected no disturbances, no tell-tale signs of enduring enchantments. Just skin.

_What magic is this?_

Regulus became painfully aware of a twig poking into his thigh and gasped audibly as the sudden realisation hit that he was, horrifically, _naked_.He scrambled to his feet and looked around, wide-eyed, expecting to find himself surrounded by a group of his jeering peers but he was alone in the forest.

And there, hanging from the branch of a nearby tree, was a set of robes.

He approached warily, eyes darting around as he half-expected Evan or Sirius or someone even more irritating to jump down from a tree and photograph him in all his disgusting nakedness.

But no one jumped down. Regulus was as alone as ever and, he realised as he reached into a pocket that wasn’t there, unarmed.

He remembered that his wand would still be sitting on his bedside table. He hadn’t imagined that he would need it; had thought that Kreacher’s elf-magic would get them as far as they needed to and then… he hadn’t expected to leave the cave.

His wand had been deliberately left behind, for his mother, so she might have something to bury. The thought of a completely empty tomb was quite disturbing.

Regulus took a deep breath and stretched his still-trembling hand towards the robes. He didn’t need his wand to detect the presence of malevolent magic. He’d had plenty of practice doing just that long before he had entered into the Dark Lord’s service - Grimmauld Place had never been a particularly safe space to raise a child.

He detected nothing malevolent. Nothing at all.

Regulus tried not to think about how strange it was that the robes fit him as perfectly as any of his tailored robes had ever fit him before. Instead, he looked around him and tried to gain his bearings: tall oak and birch trees stretched up towards the bright blue sky, their deep green leaves casting the forest floor in dappled sunshine. It was warm, but not too warm, and Regulus turned his face up to the sun.

After a time he moved away from the spot where he had awoken and followed a twisting path through the trees. It was quiet, in the forest. There were no birds twittering or leaves rustling, there were no signs of small animals darting through the undergrowth, just the sound of his own footsteps treading slowly along the path.

The silence felt quite unnatural but Regulus comforted himself with the feeling of the trees’ rough bark beneath his fingers and the scents of the wildflowers that lined the paths. The textures and smells brought memories of happier days, of spring afternoons walking to Hogsmeade or relaxing in the grounds of the castle, of summers eating ice cream in Wiltshire or plucking roses with Grandmother Melania or riding with Alphard or—

 _Alphard_.

Regulus stopped in his tracks. Almost as soon as he had imagined his uncle, Regulus saw him sitting on an upturned log.

“Regulus,” Alphard said, rising with ease. “My lion-hearted nephew.”

Regulus didn’t feel lion-hearted. He had never felt lion-hearted. He felt scared: the air around this vision of his dead uncle was crackling and pulsing with an unknown, unfamiliar magic. Regulus took a step back, his hands raised in front of him.

“It’s alright,” the man who looked like Alphard said. “Nothing can harm you any more.”

Regulus didn’t have his wand and he didn’t know what was happening and he was _scared_. He looked about him frantically, searching for a way that he might escape. The all-too-familiar feeling of choking panic began to rise up his throat.

“It’s alright,” Alphard repeated. “You’re safe now, Regulus.”

Regulus looked into his uncle’s grey eyes, so like his own, and the panic subsided as quickly as it had come. A wave of calm washed over him; a feeling of acceptance lightened his limbs.

“I died,” he said simply.

Alphard nodded, his eyebrows pulled together in an expression of sympathy.

“I died,” Regulus said again, his voice cracking.

He stumbled forwards into his uncle’s waiting arms and clung to him, his eyes squeezed tightly shut in an attempt to hold back the tears that came spilling out like a summer rainstorm.

 _Petrichor_ , he thought, stupidly.

Alphard held him tightly which made Regulus cry all the more, great shuddering sobs that racked his chest and left his throat feeling sore. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had hugged him like that. It had been months, perhaps even years.

“You’ve done very well,” Alphard said softly. “I wish things could have turned out differently for you, Regulus, but you’ve done very well and you’ve been very brave.”

“It wasn’t bravery,” Regulus sniffed, pulling away and looking down at the ground as he wiped at his wet face.

“If stealing from Voldemort isn’t bravery, if giving your life to try and halt his progress isn’t bravery, then I don’t know what is.”

Regulus shrugged and kicked his foot at the ground. It hadn’t felt like bravery when he had cried for his father and begged for his mother and screamed for Sirius. It hadn’t felt like bravery when he’d crawled, broken and bleeding, across the jagged rock to lap at the water’s edge. It hadn’t felt like bravery when he’d been dragged beneath the lake by so many decaying hands. 

He hadn’t felt brave at all.

“You’ve been very brave,” Alphard repeated, squeezing Regulus’s shoulders. “And I’m very proud of you. Shall we take a walk?”

Regulus nodded and the twisting path reappeared, though he couldn’t have said when it had vanished or whether it had gone at all. They walked together in companionable silence for a time, as Regulus kept looking for any other sign of life.

“This is the forest at the back of Aunt Cassiopeia’s,” he said, coming to a realisation.

“Yes,” said Alphard. “I thought it might be.”

Regulus glanced at him curiously. It was odd, though not _entirely_ unexpected, to find him here.

“Have you been here the entire time?”

“That is an interesting question,” said Alphard, his hands clasped lightly behind his back. “Time doesn’t seem to exist here in the same way that it does… _there_. A second could be a minute or an hour, or perhaps a year or more.”

Regulus nodded although he didn’t quite understand.

“Are you happy here?” he asked.

Alphard curled the end of his moustache around his finger while he considered that question.

“Emotions, like time, are also quite different here… I could not honestly say that I am happy, although I am not _un_ happy either. I do not have the same passions as I once did - I do not get angry, but I do not get excited. I feel neither sorrow nor joy, just a sort of… steady contentment.”

Regulus thought that he would take contentment. Thought that contentment sounded quite wonderful, actually, compared to the tumultuous past two years.

He heard a whickering and stopped suddenly, turning towards the sound. A pair of horses stood in a small clearing just off the path: Regulus recognised them as Alphard’s handsome black stallion, Tornado, and Sappho, one of Aunt Cassiopeia’s bays that Regulus had always favoured.

“Hello, old boy!” Alphard said affectionately, and wandered off the path to greet his horse.

Regulus watched them for a time and eventually stepped forward to rest his hand on Sappho’s head.

“I suppose this is where I make my choice?” Regulus asked.

“I suppose it is.”

He nodded and glanced behind him, back along the narrow twisting path that they had walked. In all his preparations for his imagined death he had never stopped to consider this moment but knew, almost immediately, what he would do.

There was nothing left for him back home.

Father had gone - and it had been Regulus’s fault. Mother was broken - his fault again. His friends, if they hadn’t hated him before, would surely hate him now. He would miss Kreacher terribly and hoped that the old elf would miss him too, just a little bit, but he had given Kreacher his task and had no doubt that he would succeed.

And Sirius… Regulus hoped that Sirius would someday, somehow, discover what he had done. He hoped that Sirius would be proud of him. He hoped that Sirius would be able to find it in his heart to forgive him, and perhaps even call him _brother_ again.

Regulus closed his eyes and took a deep, settling breath.

“I’m ready.”

Uncle and nephew trotted off into the forest, side by side. The trees grew thicker the deeper into the forest they rode and the sunlight grew weaker with every step until Regulus was enveloped in darkness. Not the thick, cloying darkness of nightmares and despair but a light, freeing one: a darkness of contentment, and rest.

And in death Regulus felt that which he had never felt in life.

Regulus felt at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Lord Byron's poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:
> 
> "When for a moment, like a drop of rain,  
> He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,  
> Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown."


End file.
